Petöfi then related, quite calmly, that our common friend, the worthy lawyer, wished to take to wife the daughter of a landed proprietor at Gran. The girl's parents were Catholics, the bridegroom was a Calvinist, they therefore would not permit the marriage. But the young people really loved each other. So there was nothing for it but to steal the bride.
The thing was quite clear. I could make no objection. When a man is poet and Protestant, girl-stealing in such a situation becomes a duty. Just then a great parliamentary strife was going on concerning mixed marriages. It was Guelph and Ghibelline over again. One had to choose one's party.
So on the following day I really did set out with Petöfi to steal a girl for the benefit of a third friend. The affair succeeded beyond all expectation. We had no need of the darkness of midnight and scaling ladders, the mere appearance of Petöfi and myself at the bride's house was sufficient; the parents gave way, and the priest united the two lovers. Yet for all that we always made much of our damsel-robbing adventure. And, indeed, it seemed likely to turn out a dangerous precedent. Example is contagious.
But I returned home with the guilty consciousness that I had absolutely spoiled the soirée. I expected that I should be pretty severely taken to task for it. How should I put things to rights again?
I discovered how to make amends, but it was not without great artfulness that I succeeded.
Our city was not only the capital of the county, but a fortress. Consequently one might frequently come upon vehicles in our streets which consisted of little more than a round chest on two wheels, crammed full of water-butts from the Danube, ammunition, bread, and sacks of meal, and between the poles of these conveyances were fastened a couple of human beings in garments of grey baize, with twenty-pound chains fastened to their legs. The creatures were called in plain Hungarian—slaves.[21] You could hear the rattling of their fetters from afar. On certain days while the self-same creatures were suffering the flogging with sticks, which was part of their sentence, their woful cries resounded through the whole town. Thus the rattling of chains and the howls of woe were a sort of speciality in our town. And the sight of those starved faces too! From my childish years upwards this slave-life used to disturb my dreams.
[21] They were prisoners condemned to penal servitude.
I got up an agitation among the more enthusiastic of the youths and maidens of our town on behalf of the poor slaves. If the affair had succeeded, I should of course never have bragged about it; but as I failed in it, I may as well make a clean breast of it.
It was determined, at my suggestion, to invite Bessy's mother to be the president of our philanthropic society. A deputation set off at once to her house, and, naturally, I was its spokesman. The distinction thus conferred upon her quite wiped out my former offence, and I was again taken into favour.
The first problem in any case was to establish our beneficent scheme on a sound, financial basis, and the simplest way of getting funds was by means of an amateur entertainment. Of this, too, I was the manager. With very great difficulty the programme was finally settled. Overture: Beatrice di Tenda.—"What's the watchword? Death, torture, ruin, to the betrayers of the fatherland!" rendered by the glee club of the College. After that a flute duet from Lucia di Lammermoor, piped by the local musical society and a young lawyer. That was to be followed by a humorous recitation of my own: "Gregory Sonkolyi"; then came an exhibition of legerdemain by Muki Bagotay; and last of all, as pièce de résistance, Bessy's fiddling.